05.19
So a new re-imagining of Thundercats has been announced, and the fire from it all has been intense. On the same time that a school shooting took place and a royal wedding was being prepared, the loudest thing I saw on social media was “Did you see the new Thundercats trailer? Look what they did to Thundercats! What the fuck did they do to Thundercats?! Damn you, CalArts! Aaaaaaaagh!” This cartoon that I haven’t thought about in years is now the center of this cultural zeitgeist where everyone took arms not even a few hours after the announcement. Friends, brothers, lovers were torn apart by whether they were for the new Thundercats or against. Tensions brewed. Creators all over the internet struck blows. And then there was the third faction that went “Dude, it’s just Thundercats. Come on.”
The old Thundercats was never a particularly good show. Even when I was a little kid watching reruns of it on Toonami, I knew how repetitive and boring it could get. It always teetered on the line between He-Man level camp and generic cartoon, and occasionally it would fall to the left and be entertaining, but for the most part, it was disposable. Aside from the furries, it did nothing to differentiate itself from the rest of its contemporaries like Jem or Star Wars Droids. And yet, its fans yearned for something more. All these 80s and 90s cartoons were getting reboots or re-imaginings, so why not Thundercats? And then we got it in 2011, opening off with a great premiere that dragged the series into a post-Avatar world. But then that premiere turned out to be beginner’s luck, and the rest of the show became a slow churn that didn’t impress either kids or the CN executives, leading to its cancellation. So the franchise slept again, only acknowledged by old school fans or an Egoraptor. Then fast forward to seven years later, and now a Thundercats show is something people can’t shut up about.
It’s ridiculous, and now I’m unwittingly part of this by writing an article about it. But yeah, as I type this, there are thousands of tweets, posts, blogs, you name it about how the new Thundercats is a sign of the times, a pandemic that has plagued cartoons for so long, a degenerate trend, and something that vaguely involves the product soy. And I’m sitting here thinking, “Why is Thundercats the tipping point for you guys?” I might understand if it was Gargoyles getting rebooted into a wacky OK KO clone, but Thundercats was always a dumb show to begin with. How are they going to make Snarf more annoying? How would they make some of the episode plots even stupider than what happened in the first show? One of the 1985 episodes involved Snarf’s nephew buying Mexican takeout and getting accosted by this Robocop knockoff. Maybe if you were hoping for another season of the 2011 show, it would suck to see this. But whatever the case, it’s overblown. Once you see detractors getting mad at the showrunner’s hair over the actual show, you know it’s overblown.
But that’s not to say we should defend this show. Because even if I don’t care about Thundercats at all, I don’t like the style here personally. It looks too derivative to other Cartoon Network shows, and to say “but what about how all the 80s cartoons looked the same” is a weak argument because I didn’t like the style there either. We shouldn’t use tired aesthetics to defends other tired aesthetics. And the “It’s for kids, and they’re gonna like it!” argument doesn’t work either, since Cartoon Network’s ratings have been dropping so hard that even cable companies like Xfinity are moving it up to premium. It’s a bold assumption to make that kids will instantly like it. And besides, if this was really aimed squarely at kids, why adapt a property from over thirty years ago? Don’t you think children deserve more than hand-me-downs? I’m sure the creators have a lot of passion for this, but almost every cartoon has a lot of passion put into it. Passion is a basic ingredient at this point. Zack Snyder said he puts tons of passion in his DC movies, and look what happened there. Thundercats was always a dumb show, and the reboot looks like it will be another dumb show. So all the tension and furor is confusing. And once it all simmers down, I expect people to go up in arms again once the new She-Ra comes out, and people born one or two decades after the old show’s syndication run ended talk about how their childhoods are ruined.